Vegetarianism

A few years ago at a bachelorette party, the group of us girls went to a steak house for dinner, and I ordered a salad. The girl sitting next to me looked stunned and said:

A: You got a salad?

Me: Yeah. It's really good!

A: Why did you just get a salad?

Me: I'm a vegetarian.

A: Are you allergic to meat?

(side note...is that even possible? it might be possible, i don't know, but it just sounds really weird)

Me: No, I just think it's kind of gross to eat a dead body.

A: But don't you know that meat is good?

(wow.)

Me: Well, I've actually never been a huge fan of meat anyway so it was easy for me to give it up.

A (sounding confused): But....there's cheese on your salad.

Me (even more confused): ......Well......I'm just a vegetarian, not a vegan.

She paused, gave me a blank stare, turned her back to me and started talking to the girl on her other side. I guess the vegetarian lifestyle isn't understood by everyone.

My off-and-on vegetarianism began in 7th grade. The choice back then was really just following along with my best friend who wanted to stand up for animal rights, which I had much less passion about than she did. So it was only about a month or two later that I was staring at the menu at McDonald's trying to decide between a garden salad, or chicken nuggets. The chicken nuggets won that battle and my animal rights movement went down the drain.

That became a pattern for me every few years...not eating meat for a month or two but ultimately realizing that it was just easier to eat meat, even though it was kind of gross to eat a dead body. So I guess this proves that I'm just lazy and am more strongly influenced by convenience rather than conviction.

This last time around, at the age of 26 I decided once again to stop eating meat. And by this time there had been so many advances in soy over the years that I thought it would be an easy switch for me...and it was...but I also fooled myself into thinking that all this new soy would provide the key I had previously been missing in making the lifestyle actually stick for life.

But now I am once again "off" vegetarianism, much in part to my husband's love of meat, and also due to my accidental meat-eating a couple years ago that made me say, "Screw it. I'll just start eating meat again." It happened at work one Saturday. As a "thank you" to everyone who had come in to work that weekend, the boss bought Jimmy Johns for everyone for lunch. It was a catered platter with a variety of sandwiches. I took one that looked like a veggie...all I saw was cheese and lettuce. But when I bit into it, I discovered that there was tuna fish buried under the lettuce. And it was delicious! So I was torn. I had devoted 3 years to not eating meat, and I still wanted to be a vegetarian, but now there was this blemish on my not-eating-meat record. The damage had been done. I didn't know what to do. And it continued to bother me for a few more days after the tuna fish incident, until I was on my way home from work later that week and had a huge craving for a turkey sandwich. I gave in. So much for conviction.

Sometimes I still think about going back to that lifestyle, but ultimately, I'm not sure why I really would. I know it would just end up the same way that it always has. Not having a passionate reason for choosing vegetables (or in my case lots of pasta) over meat has really been my downfall. I should just accept the fact that even though I don't love meat as much as I feel that a meat-eater should, that doesn't mean that I have to stay away from it all together. It's perfectly fine to still eat vegetarian meals whenever I feel like it and yet not consider myself a vegetarian.

But on days like yesterday, waiting in line for my turkey burger at our office cafeteria, I was horrified as I watched the cook put raw pieces of chicken on the grill; all slimy with spots of blood in them and fat stuck to the edges. It made me want to throw up. And it's in those moments that I think I might prefer to be a vegetarian again...at least for a little while.